Pandemic Technology

 “Global Civil War – Capitalism Post-Pandemic” by William I. Robinson, 2022

Robinson’s thesis is that the CoVid pandemic super-charged capital’s world-wide movement into a Fourth Industrial era of technology – that of advanced digitalization of nearly everything – labor, profits, military issues, surveillance and commodification.  This is thru AI, robots, cloud data computing, 5G, the Internet of Things, blockchain and ‘immaterial’ commodities. The results are increasing inequality, financialization and exploitation of the earth’s resources.  Like Peter Phillips, he thinks the transnational capitalist class (TCC) is leading this effort.

The Pandemic

What are the details?  Robinson first discusses the vast increase in inequality across the world.  The pandemic ran up the number of millionaires and billionaires as they took advantage of the crisis, with an 88% increase in wealth for the top group.  This though $9 trillion was lost in the general world economy as it went into a deep recession in 2020. Trillions were doled out by national banks to keep corporations afloat.  The pandemic is one of the key recent ‘restructurings’ of capital according to him – in the 1930s under Roosevelt, in the 1970s with the advent of neo-liberalism, in the 2007-2008 crash that ushered in austerity and damaged neo-liberalism and now the 2020 pandemic, which is prompting a digital restructuring of capital globally.  

The pandemic allowed capital to move work to the internet for many white collar jobs.   It increased robotization.  It led to new algorithms, making work more productive and resulting in fewer employees. It elevated the role of TCC corporations, which were further able to escape national economies.  The pandemic led to an over-accumulation of capital but without a productive or profitable outlet.  This situation results in speculation, internal drives for privatization and national and military conflicts to stave off stagnation. Equity firms buying houses fits into this strategy for instance.  Robinson also applies Marx’s theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.  When capital invests in machines instead of labor, moving from variable capital to fixed capital, this pushes down profit rates. As all profits come from labor and nature, the capitalists ‘naturally’ begin to squeeze global labor more and increase exploitation of the last bits of the earth.

Accompanying the rise in inequality was a jump in digital surveillance and police action, spurred by technical fixes to deal with the plague.  China was a leader in this method, but other countries followed suit and he details examples of each.  Populations were subject to a high level of national control around movement, killing the tourist industry, stranding citizens and grounding planes.  While flirting with the ‘lab leak’ theory, Robinson understands the majority of new diseases are ‘zoonotic’ – coming from human invasions of formerly pristine animal environments - so the Wuhan ‘wet market’ is the very likely culprit.  Regarding China, even in 2020, U.S. investors owned $1.1 trillion equity in Chinese entities.  In 2023 it went to $1.26 trillion.  Both economies are entwined in spite of the conflict.     

Technology Expansion

In 2019 about half the planet was on-line, with 5.2 billion smartphones in operation.  Now it is 7.2 billion in 2024.  The misnamed ‘sharing economy’ and 3D printers saw huge increases in 2019.  In 2019, digital services made $1.9 trillion, half of all services world-wide.  In 2022 global IP traffic hit around 15,700 GB per second.  All of these have increased since he wrote the book.  This is why ‘intellectual property’ has become so valuable, a tech understanding essential to almost any job and why ‘intangible assets’ for corporations outweigh ‘tangible’ ones.  Paper currency is more and more going out the window to boot, though according to Robinson world capital had $14.4 trillion in digital cash in 2020, showing its inability to find investment opportunities. 

The pandemic, according to Bank of America, most profited tech services, new media and entertainment, e-commerce, data centers, biopharma and bio-tech, on-line medical diagnostics, industrial and military automation, software, semi-conductors, cloud services, renewable utilities and food and household staples. Robinson contends that this grouping is part of the new ‘bloc of capital.’  He contends this reflects capital reaching a limit to global ‘extensive expansion’ and turning to internal ‘intensive expansion.’  The goal is ‘laborless production’ and even ‘zero marginal costs.’  For instance automation has reduced agricultural employment picking things like fruit and nuts in California by 11%. He contends, as have others, that automation is coming for every sector of jobs, even middle-class professionals.  

On-line work weakens the class

Isolation is the social product engineered by working at home or in scattered, small offices and shops.  It reflects the reduction in size of huge auto factories like River Rouge, mini-steel mills and the export of production to China and Mexico.  This is being partly counteracted by the growth in huge logistics warehouses like Amazon, but even in these locations workers are monitored and fewer due to robots. 'Essential workers' were the blue-collar exception but, as in the slaughterhouses, they got sick and died in higher numbers.  Isolation and automation breaks up the social ties and links among workers, especially the digital proletariat. The huge growth in ‘independent contractors,’ ‘gig’ jobs and temp labor emphasizes this point.  This all helps capital.

The Answer?

Robinson has 3 outcomes to this last phase of capitalist restructuring.  Either a class revolution, a rise of fascist dictatorships or an environmental and barbarous collapse of world civilization.  These are all extreme poles, but they reference present tendencies.  Robinson runs through a familiar, anodyne list of large Left protests before and during the pandemic in 2019-2020 – among them huge strikes in India, the French Yellow Vests, Chinese labor disruptions and protests against police brutality across the world after the murder of George Floyd  The quantity of conflicts went way up worldwide.  Robinson notes that revolutionary organization, a socialist goal and theory are missing, so the ‘quality’ is not yet there.  International coordination is another, as ‘socialism in one country’ wasn’t possible in the last century, nor in this one.  Another is that being ‘anti-state’ or trying to reform the state ignores the state’s absolute connection with the economy.  As if the police are a stand-alone entity!  In this context he writes against the ideologies of post-modernism and identitarianism as being absorbed and promoted by a wing of capital. 

One cheery rebellion Robinson highlights is the 2019 Sudanese political revolution which ousted a corrupt dictator from Khartoum.  Unfortunately his book was written before the brutal reversal of that revolution and descent into a bloody and long-lasting civil war.  The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the genocidal bombing of Gaza are also missing.  His main point is that neo-liberalism no longer suffices as a capitalist answer to the world’s problems.  This is the conundrum the U.S. Democratic Party faces but will ignore. 

Which leads us to his second option – fascism. Protests did not just originate from the Left but from the Right and Libertarianism – although some reformist ‘leftists’ still can’t understand this. The growth in elected authoritarians like Trump, Orban, Netanyahu, Putin, Erdogan and Modi reflect this. It’s the ‘democratic dictatorship of the oligarchs and petit-bourgeoisie’ to my mind.  On their shirttails are ultra-right to fascist militias, organizations, religious sects and internet podcasters - some even pretending to be ‘anti-war’ or ‘anti-imperialist.’    

Fascism is a particular response to capitalist crisis according to Robinson, trying to appeal to a plebian base, but violently supporting capitalist accumulation by blaming everyone but the monied ruling class.  This method is no secret.  The U.K.s Brexit was a good example.  It showed the reactionary rot of nationalism, which is a compliment to irrationalism, fundie religions, racism and ethno-politics in the backasswards arsenal of the Right.  Robinson understands that the TCC appreciates pro-business efforts, but not outright fascist or authoritarian tacks so far.  They would rather have improved and widespread policing instead of Brownshirts and illegal violence.    

Robinson's main influence is Gramsci, though Gramsci didn't dwell on this economics.  Robinson understands that the 'spatial' displacement of crises is no longer as possible. A guide of cyclical, structural and systemic crisis is Robinson's template to understanding breakdowns and restructuring under capital.  Cyclical crises occur on a regular basis, like recessions and depressions.  Structural ones demand a fundamental change in accumulation and technology, which is what is happening now with the 4th industrial revolution.  The third, a systemic crisis, spells doom for capital itself … something no one can predict but one can prepare for.  Take your pick.

Prior blogspot reviews, use search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “The Global Police State” (Robinson); “Giants – the Global Power Elite” and “Titans of Capital” (both by Phillips); “The Long Depression” and “Capitalism in the 21^st Century” (both by Roberts); “Zombie Capitalism,” “The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles” and “The Enigma of Capital”  (both by Harvey); “Dead Epidemiologists” (Wallace); “Pandemic – CoVid Shakes the World” (Zizek); “Who Get’s Bailed Out?” “Going Viral” or the word “technology.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / November 20, 2024

Multi-Culty Christendom

 “Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok© Cult” documentary by Jessica Acevedo, 2024

I’m looking at YouTube© and I’d been watching groups of people dance to the funny, political and danceable song “Rasputin” by Boney M.  In the feed I also saw some videos of these frenetic but precise dancers doing Michael Jackson style moves, dancers named Miranda, Vik and B’Dash (James) dancing to other tracks.  Oddly, this documentary is about those three, the hell-fire church they belong to and the exploitative cult it became.

Ex-members

Miranda’s parents had spent years promoting the dancing of their two daughters Miranda and Melanie.  The sisters eventually move to L.A. when they get older and instead of getting hired by a dance troupe, they start doing TikTok© videos together, which garner followers and later advertisers.  All is good and they join a cohort of excellent dancers in the city doing a similar thing. Gradually Miranda is drawn in by B’Dash into a church and the 7M production company, which promises companionship, housing and a career.  It’s run by a South Korean pastor, Robert Shinn.  The church is called SheKinah which follows a form of strict fundamentalist Protestant theology that claims everyone sins thousands of times a day.  To cure their ‘sins’ and go to heaven they must follow the pastor at every turn or they will go to hell.  The church condemns them to hell if they leave the church or don’t agree with the pastor. They fear being cursed by God’s man on earth and that is a heavy burden for a parishioner.  The Bible becomes their text.

Now to an atheist, this is pure abuse disguised as ‘truth.’  But these young people actually believe this nonsense and are in fear for their mortal souls.  Miranda’s parents were nominal Catholics, but when Melanie tells them about the church, which she refused to join with her sister, they are apprehensive.  In line with this, Miranda is told by “Robert” to cut all ties to friends and family, to ‘die’ to live again and be saved. So Miranda stops talking to her family. This is the advice given to all members of the church.

What follows is a run-down of how this particular cult worked.  The church members inform on each other over ‘infractions.’  They are forced to live in various houses owned by the church, and are moved every 9 months or so.  They do pay rent for their shared room.  Friends are separated. All of the members are controlled by ‘mentors’ over what they buy or eat or where they go or how they look while dancing. Their communications are monitored and some people are shunned for not performing well.  Female members of the church testify to repeated sexual demands by Robert during ‘massages.’  You don’t want to disappoint God’s man on earth!  So sexual abuse was endemic.  The kicker is the economics. 

Miranda, Vik, B'Dash

The Church takes almost 75-80% of their earnings as dancers or employees.  Robert and the Church own a number of businesses where church members work for next to nothing too … a real estate company, café, flower shop, mortgage company and the like.  7M Films, which is also owned by Robert, made an amateurish show called The Millionaires’ Club, and tried to promote members as singers and actors, but struck it big with the dancers.  The TikTok© dancers bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars and appeared in big venues – TV shows, the Super Bowl, music videos, adverts and even one movie, Road House 2. For their own use they got between $15 and $100 dollars every week or two.  Their accounts are controlled and deductions are made by the Church, 7M or directly to Robert, which are ostensibly separate, but really one entity controlled by Pastor Shinn.

All of this slowly leaks out to Miranda’s family and they start trying to contact her.  She has nothing to do with them.  They reach out to other families who report the same situation.  Eventually their intrusive efforts at contacting their children start bugging the man of God.  Whispers start even within his churches’ closeted walls, along with internal, public accusations of sexual abuse. Robert decides that for publicity purposes he will allow occasional sterile ‘meetings’ with parents or siblings.  Nevertheless several groups of members quit and some of them are interviewed in the documentary.  But Miranda, Vik and James (B’dash) never quit.  Most of their YouTube© videos are dated before the documentary’s release in May 2024 but they still maintain their personal sites. 

This situation ends in the filing of a civil suit and a criminal complaint alleging labor exploitation, fraud, sexual abuse and more.  The problem is that a cult is not illegal.  Those who ‘willingly’ comply are responsible under the law.  The key is what constitutes coercion – what level of pressure, what kind, what are the consequences of disobeying?  If you went along with demands for sex, is it ‘consensual’ or coerced?  The clearer violation might be financial exploitation, but as SheKinah says, many people ‘willingly’ donate their time and energy to religious or non-profit institutions – even political parties. Complaining about being paid a sub-minimum wage might have a time-limited value too, as the suit covers many years. 

So the success of this lawsuit, which will probably go to trial in 2025, is unknown given our ‘hands off’ legal system in regards to religion.  The church even sued these ex-members for defamation – a tactic familiar to anyone who has opposed Scientology, which sues anyone who criticizes it.  They also intentionally brought out the ‘race’ card, claiming the family opposed Miranda’s relationship with the dark-skinned dancer James.  Not true, as the family had him over a good number of times before the Church intervened.  They were not invited to their daughter’s wedding to James, which was held under SheKinah’s auspices.  Many of the original church members were young Koreans, so there is an ethnic side to this.  Much of the evidence in the documentary is of tape recordings of Robert’s sermons. 

Cults are kind of a fun-house, extreme version of what goes on in capitalist society.  Even some diets, like the carnivore one, are accused of being cultish.  Are you in a cult? This blog has covered Scientology, Bikram Yoga, the Rajneeshees, NXIVM, FLDS, Remnant Church, Children of God, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hasidim and certain MLM schemes and businesses like Brandy Melville.  Certainly for personal political, emotional or real reasons people cut ties with their families, sometimes for good reasons, many times not.  But when a church orders its members to do so, that is a different kettle of fish. Capitalism lives off of labor exploitation, lost wages, unpaid wages, low wages and the like.  SheKinah seems to be a front for a rip-off financial racket, using religious language to severely control its employees.  This is not rare at all.  Take heed.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use the search box in the upper left to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “cult,” “religion.”      

The Cultural Marxist / November 17, 2024

Gothic Enough For You?

 “Capitalism – A Horror Story. Gothic Marxism and the Dark Side of the Radical Imagination” by Jon Greenaway, 2024

I’m not a fan of horror films of any kind, as there is enough real horror under capitalism.  Greenaway on the other hand is a fan.  In this book he wallows in a good number of modern horror movies and several books, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Dracula by Bram Stoker.  These 3 are well known and have been thoroughly examined already.  This is all in the service of something he calls ‘Gothic Marxism.’  Greenaway is a Brit with a Ph.D from the Manchester Center for Gothic Studies, so you better listen.  Or not. 

I’ve only seen two of the films he mentions – Parasite and The Platform.  I had to stop watching the latter because it was so cruel and terrible.  It’s a about a multi-story structure of trickle-down food and cannibalism based on 133 class levels, with the bottom ones getting the least to no food.  Parasite is based on the conflict between a servant family and a wealthy family, with two sets of servants fighting and slaughtering each other to retain their jobs.  Both illuminate capitalist nightmares.

So what the f*ck is Gothic Marxism?  Greenaway riffs off of Marx’s use of vampire, ghost, body and horror images to extend the notion that there is an emancipatory and utopian side to political splatter films, a case I find weak. But you know Marxists, using dialectics to tease out the inner contradictions of anything.  He enlists surrealism, expressionism, Ernest Bloch and Walter Benjamin in his logic. Then he promotes TERF feminists and people as ‘fascists,’ so his materialism is somewhat twisted.   He maintains that these films don’t just embody the fears and damage of capitalist society, but also point towards a more human, utopian future. His ‘monsters’ are supposedly all figures of rebellion, like claiming Dracula didn’t want to work. Well, don’t all criminals have that aspiration?  Hobbesian communal and individual violence is the result in film after film. Witches, in the context of sexism, may be the outstanding exception. The ‘spectre’ still haunting capital and the Republican and Democratic Parties is another.  “Zombie” corporations exist, who will never pay their debts back. And yeah, the Stones did Sympathy for the Devil.  So there is some kind of bargain to be made with ‘Gothic’ Marxism, but perhaps not a deep one at all. 

Greenaway’s ‘gothic’ Marxism is based on the human body, which is the target of so much damage under capital – through work, war, weather, sickness, pregnancy, bad food, pollution, pandemics, starvation, addiction, crime, accidents and the like. Mortality has a habit of working like that. He calls the outcomes ‘necro-political’ and ‘necro-neoliberal’ class antagonisms in a world I have labeled verging on sado-capitalism.  “Gothic” in his mind is the haunting of the present by the past – a virtual description of conservatism.  Ghosts are the representatives of history, as ‘dead generations’ weigh like a nightmare on the minds of the living. As Faulkner put it, the past is never past.  How the past impacts the future positively is the problem for Greenaway – other than reminding all of the impermanency of social life. 

Saws All

The films covered, besides Parasite and The Platform are: the dystopian Purge and Saw franchises; Ready or Not, The Sadness, The Beach House, Crimes of the Future, Possessor, “VVitch,” “Suspira,” “Can the Monster Speak,” “Pulse,” Unfriended: Dark Web,” “Host,” “A Dark Song,” “Tell Me I’m Worthless” (book);

The real form of horror in culture today is not actual horror films, which are a niche commodity.  It is the overwhelming flood of murder stories – kidnapping, sexual assault, assassination, war, drug, gang, true crime, secret agent and serial killer TV shows, series and movies.  These reflect the increasing barbarity of societies on a plain level and their heroes are mostly cops, detectives, spies or civilians looking for justice or revenge.  Actual horror films pale in comparison, especially knowing their main audiences are teenagers and 20-somethings.  Films like “Get Out” reveal the horrors of liberal racism so they still have a role to play, but this film was missed by Greenaway as was the whole Black Mirror series.   A real ‘purge’ is coming in the U.S., while purges in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon are already here. Most older adults have by necessity moved on to a horror more real. 

If this kind of Left cultural criticism is your thing, or you read a lot of horror, than come on in and buy the book!

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, us blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “The Jungle” (Sinclair); “Parasite,” “Monsters of the Market” (McNally); “Get Out” (Peele); “Capitalist Realism” (Fisher); “New Dark Age” (Bridle); “Capitalism, a Ghost Story” (Roy); “The Hunger Games,”

The Cultural Marxist / November 15, 2024

Lifestyles of the Poor and Alienated

 “Living a Marxist Life: Why Marx is a Drug You Should Probably Take” by Andrew Pendakis, 2024

On the cover of the book is a picture of Che looking like a hipster, reading Goethe.  This is a ‘cool’ book from a cultural angle that turns being a Marxist into becoming some kind of hip intellectual and activist. It’s a work about what Pendakis thinks of as a subculture and lifestyle, an almost declasse boho strata, a romantic cohort of cosmopolitans who know the real truth. Pendakis is an Associate Professor at Brock University in Canada, yet his father was a truck driver and his home-life religious.  He imbibed this negative class lesson into his angle, so shopping, work, a house, family, love, careerism and money are all approached with irony, alienation and ambivalence through a Marxist lens.  The book is aimed at young people – or precisely ‘students’ – and so being hip is essential to his ‘drug’ dealing.

It’s not based on a survey of the many different types of Marxists across the world or prior books or studies about being a Communist - it’s a work of informed imagination.  That information is gleaned from the work of hundreds of famous or prominent Marxist revolutionaries, activists and academics, the ones he constantly lists – people like Adorno, Badiou, Benjamin, Ghodsee, Luxemburg and Zizek.  It is not clear he’s in a socialist organization or been in class combat.  The book only intersects with those experiences – which seem to be essential to actual Marxism – in the last chapter. He once calls Lenin and Engels ‘vulgar’ Marxists, but he did use quote marks on the word ‘vulgar.’ He’s a good writer, with many clever turns of phrase, and jokes at capital’s expense. He over-emphasizes, then auto-corrects like a zig-zag train. And he needs an editor in this chatty book.  So what has he got to say?

In his celebration of alienation, he thinks Marxists do as little on an employed job as possible.  However, as anyone who has actually worked for a long time in a blue, service or white collar occupation knows – lazy or incompetent people get no respect, usually because this impacts their co-workers.  It doesn’t matter how ‘brilliant’ they are or how pro-union.  They’re seen as sad dicks.  This is part of his flawed description of Marxists as knowing hipsters, though that type certainly exists too.  As Vivian Gornick pointed out in her book “The Romance of American Communism” party members were from many ‘walks’ of life, though most were poor or working class but also included artists, the middle class and intellectuals.  She said “there was not one CP type.”  (“Romance” reviewed below.)  My contact with older, organized Marxists from the 1970s to today shows many were union people, some were down and outs, some profs, but solid and established comrades.  This is unlike the generations coming up now as the ‘Boomer’ good times slide away.  ‘Who’ is a Marxist changes depending on what historical stage a society is at.

Pendakis makes a point about the enormous and omnivorous intellectual influence of Marxism in many fields – sociology, geography, politics, history, anthropology, psychology, environmental and natural sciences, culture, military studies, political economy, philosophy, religion - even cosmology.  No wonder the Right wants to shut down universities outside of the business school and the technical or hard sciences and focus high school only on the 3 ‘Rs’. This is because Marxists are autodidacts – always learning; and because Marxism is a holistic method of actuality and flux that recognizes few barriers.  In this context he objects to simplified bumper-sticker / Facebook© thinking, to repetition, reduction and the bureaucratized groupthink of the Stalinized Communist Parties in the Twentieth century, as it mitigates against Marxist methods. Marxism is a method and mentality clearly not frozen in amber, much as some wish it so.

Wadya' smokin' boys?

Pendakis spends a long time on how Marxism is in a deep sense true – an almost ‘documentary’ vision of the world, not one clogged by veils, lies, ideology, intentional blindness or complacent comfort.  It reads like a pat on the back for all us Reds.  He paints it not as a dark vision but believes that knowledge and clarity are their own rewards.  This insight he gained out of a depressing working-class childhood and then brought it into the professional academic arena.  Instead he makes a plea for anger, a very un-academic recommendation.  Liberals and technocrats see politics as “little more than rational conversation” (Ha!) so rage is the province of thugs and crazy people. Religion and yoga want to banish anger too. Pendakis sees it as fuel for action if properly directed and applied creatively.  This is nothing new of course.

According to Pendakis, liberals identify rage with fascism, which makes Marxists … fascists.  As historically stupid as this co-identification may be, it’s a lie told to maintain immediate control.  Marx’s own combativeness is held against him, though it was to sharpen his own theories and defeat opponents – an intellectual version of the class war. In this context Pendakis keeps on mentioning Zizek’s clever demolition of the lazy thinking of Canadian conservative Jordan Peterson, who seems to be his bête noire. 

Pendakis finishes with a discussion of organization.  He describes the dedication of a Maoist in 1962 trying to reconstruct a city in China and an Adivasi Naxalite guerilla in India - both to show that hard conditions can be the most fulfilling to a socialist.  In the process he dismisses Maoism as a product of its time and place, and guerilla war as almost extinct. In this context he points out that Marxists have repeatedly been the subject of anti-communist pogroms in many countries, so ‘courage’ is one of the ingredients of being one.  He says he’s a supporter of some kind of Leninist party, but describes all the other forms of organizations Marxists might participate in – unions, cooperatives, united fronts, specific activist organizations, community and ad hoc groups.  His definition of “Marxist’ here is broad – actually including anarchists and unions, with a nod to social-democrats and others in a ‘big’ church.  He does a non-specific roundup of debates between socialists over the possibility of revolution, the nature of socialism, the question of violence and the overwhelming need for organized politics as part of a ‘spiritual,’ atheistic Marxism. He makes a passionate plea for a Marxist morality but most of all, for the value of a politically organized life against individual or performative isolation.    

Will this book win over the kids?  Pendakis is obviously a highly literate writer with an intimate knowledge of various philosophers, so ‘headier’ youth might be recruited to join a Marxist subculture.  But as they say, acts speak louder than words.  Profs are impressive to students, but not so much to others.  This book itself is hard to get through because of its somewhat endless, rambling and repetitive nature, along with its tiny print. Nevertheless it is a good introduction - for some - to the “constantly expanding theoretical universe” of Marxism – being personal without being too theoretical after all.   

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using this term:  “Marxism.”    

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / November 11, 2024

Celebrate Armistice Day!

A Friggin' Saint

“Vera Drake” film by Mike Leigh, 2004

This is a realist, ‘kitchen-sink’ film about providing secret abortions in London in 1950.  Abortion, like it was in the U.S., was against the law at the time.  So it’s view of our future in a bunch of states in the U.S., if not the whole country.  Vera Drake is a kind and happy working class woman who takes care of her ailing mother and a sick neighbor, works in a light-bulb factory, works as a cleaner for a wealthy woman and takes care of her family by cooking and cleaning. A spot of tea and cheerfulness are her methods. She’s a friggin’ saint.

Vera’s motivation towards the various women she works with is to help them, a kindness when they are overwhelmed with too many children already, were raped, are destitute or can’t handle a child at their young age.  She uses a solution pumped into the uterus that produces a miscarriage, which is disposed of in the toilet.  Her methods have worked for years.  She does not take money and treats this as an act of charity and concern.  She works with another woman who connects her to the pregnant, who collects 87 pounds in 2023 money from each.

Eventually one of the women who she helped gets sick and goes to the hospital where the miscarriage is thought to be suspicious.  The police get involved and eventually they trace it back to Vera.  Vera is totally cowed by the court and is tried and sent to prison with a longer 2.5 year sentence as a legal warning to others.  The sentence is carried out based on an archaic law – the “Offences Against The Person Act” of 1861.  There she meets other women also in the stir for the same ‘crime.’  They tell her she will get out sooner than that.

A gut punch of a film, as her family did not know about her secret activities. Vera is only dimly aware of the illegality of what she is doing. The cruelty of the austere police system towards these women is obvious.  There is no happy ending – except that in 1967 most abortions were made legal in the U.K. up to 22 weeks.  They were based on a ‘risk to woman’s mental health,’ along with threats to the mother’s physical health, or that the child will suffer from physical or mental disabilities.  This is six years before the U.S. national Roe v Wade decision.  The NHS provides the care for free. Scotland and Wales followed English law in 1967.  Northern Ireland liberalized their laws in 2019 upon a decree of the U.K. Parliament, as the prior government had been under the control of the ‘Democratic’ Unionist Party of conservative High-Church Tories.

Mike Leigh is one of the best proletarian filmmakers in the U.K., who along with Ken Loach nearly always produces films of gravity and social realism.  The blog has reviewed two of his films: “High Hopes” about working-class Lefties under Thatcherism and “Mr. Turner,” about the idiosyncratic impressionist painter J.M.W Turner.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “Abortion,” ‘Without Apology,” “Obstacle Course,” “Abortion Referendum in Ireland,” “Fetal,” “Let’s Rent a Train!,” “Marxism & Women’s Liberation,” "High Hopes," "Mr. Turner."

The Cultural Marxist / November 8, 2024

The Great Dictator

 “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,” by Bertolt Brecht, 1941. Adapted, 2016. Frank Theater Reading

Frank Theater’s planned production of this play at one of their movable sites didn’t happen, so instead they staged a free reading at the St. Thomas College Library in St. Paul, MN, USA. It is an adaptation of Brecht’s original play about the rise of fascism in Germany, now fitted to respond to the rise of Trump in 2016.  I’m not sure the adaptation worked, but then I do not have a copy of each play before me.  Nor did anyone else. Certainly lines were inserted into the text that reference quotes by Trump, or allude to him and the MAGA movement. 

2013, Duchess Theater

Arturo Ui (Hitler) in this satire is a Depression-era gangster in Chicago in the 1930s who liquidates anyone who opposes him in his quest to take over the “Cauliflower Trust” (Really the German Junkers and the petit-bourgeoisie) in the city.  The Trust is all of the town’s vegetable dealers, so the whole bourgeois segment of society. He’s sort of an Al Capone on the surface.  In the process he corrupts a powerful Chicago city council person (really von Hindenberg), every vegetable dealer, liquidates a newspaper man (The Chancellor of Austria); and blames others for his crew’s arson and shootings – all part of his protection racket.  He manages to get a huge loan from the city to build a dock and the Trust steals all the money, based on a real scandal in Germany about aid to eastern farmers that was stolen by Junker landowners.  The gang (Nazi Party) and two of its prominent leaders (Goebbels and Goring) resort to continual lies, fabrications and plots. Then the complicated story expands to Cicero (Austrian Anschluss), a formerly notorious mob hangout near Chicago.  Ui pretends to be diplomatic at all times, yet finds himself killing his closest confidant (Ernest Rohm, leader of the Brownshirts) as he’s fearful of anyone opposing him.

The humor, satire and sarcasm are engaging, the unctuous blather obvious, the occasional rhyming dialog great, the frequent crude swearing somewhat shocking even to me.  The machine-gun killings are repetitive but I guess that is the point.  The key link between Trump and Ui is that both pledge to protect the ‘good people’ from evil – criminals, immigrants, Commies, labor people, Jews, Muslims, demons, what have you.  This when the real problems are being caused by Ui and Trump’s allies, who do things like light vegetable warehouses on fire (Reichstag fire).  Blaming others for your own crimes to hide the real perps is the method.  It’s the projection of fear onto ‘the Other’ - Jews, communists, gays, Gypsies, Mexicans, Blacks, Haitians, Chinese, trans people.  It is a purely emotional tactic playing on identity and obscuring real power. 

So the question becomes political in this version – is Trump a fascist like Hitler? Some Democratic leaders now seem to think so. Certainly he has fascist allies on the Christian Dominionist Right, in the various militias, in the bellicose podcast milieu, in MAGA.  The 3%ers, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers are all mobilized, armed and threatening anyone who gets in their way. Yet fascism’s full control of state power requires the adherence of the majority of the ruling class and the military, neither of which he will have or need if he wins.  Trump can still wreak havoc even without full state power.  At least that is their plan.

Trump’s actually a demagogic authoritarian who will use threats, presidential power, legislative power and police power to carry out the aims of his right-wing capitalist backers, as shown in Project 2025.  Orban’s Hungary is the ‘democratic’ ethno-state that they aspire to ape. He won’t need to kill every enemy, or jail them, as did Hitler or Ui.  He will use the U.S. judiciary, journalists, police, educational institutions, church and military powers instead.  His base in the South is already moving in that direction.  Whether he can achieve that nationally is another matter. The resistance of the advanced elements of the working class will make all the difference to defeat any moves towards more authoritarianism.  This is a group which is not mentioned in the text, as the ‘resistance’ inferred by the title – ‘Resistible’ - does not have a parallel in the play except for a tough investigator in Chicago. Evidently the audience is the resistance, which in this case was full of mostly older liberals, sad to say.   

Frank Theater will possibly put on the full play in the spring or summer.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “Fetal,” “Things of Dry Hours,” “Love and Information,” “The Cradle Will Rock,” “The Convert,” “Revolt. Revolt She Said. Revolt Again,” The Good Person of Setzuan,” “The Visit,” (All plays by Frank Theater); or the words ‘fascism,’ ‘Trump’ or ‘Hitler.’  

The Kultur Kommissar / November 5, 2024       

The Social Geography of Harlem

 “Harlem Shuffle” by Colson Whitehead, 2021

There’s a 1963 R&B song called “The Harlem Shuffle.”  In a way there’s some literary ‘swing’ in this book too – the sights and sounds of early 1960s Harlem in the characters that tread the streets and work the dives, the not so hidden chorus of money, power, violence and theft, the African-American songs of life and ire.  Carney is a high-end furniture shop owner in Harlem that cannot escape his father’s criminal background.  He lives in two worlds, while maintaining he’s on the up and up all the time.  He’s a small-time fence for stolen goods, with connections to bigger ‘jewelers’ downtown, but you wouldn’t know that from his impressive showroom packed with fancy couches and dining sets. 

Other than the buyers and young couples that come in looking for a new settee or love seat, there are scheming prostitutes, crooked cops, dueling criminal operations, drug markets and a steady stream of thieves and thugs.  It’s also an examination of the class structure in Harlem, especially the “Dumas Club” full of the bankers, real estate moguls, politicians and businessmen that really ran Harlem in 1959-1964. Poverty is also evident, people all over scrambling to make a dime. This contrast is for those who don’t understand class even in a ‘minority’ community.  You might note that last date, because that is when the Harlem Rebellion happened, an event that tore the neighborhood apart and was avoided by both the petit-bourgeois rich and lumpen thug alike.  Like so many others, it started when a pale face cop shot a dark-skinned 15 year old for nothing.  Whitehead’s political take on it however is vague, given the players he has chosen to focus on.  No Malcolm X, no Bill Epton, no Progressive Labor, just short mentions of CORE, the Muslims and the NAACP. 

Whitehead knows the streets, from Lenox Avenue, 125^th Street, Striver’s Row to Riverside Drive, the old, shabby businesses and the still existing Apollo Theater.  Even Mt. Morris Park where the bodies are dumped.  In a way its a nostalgic description of those times.  It was in 1959 at the upscale and still existing legendary Hotel Theresa that Carney is dragged into a criminal robbery by his ne’er-do-well boyhood cousin Freddie.  It is one of three criminal events that Whitehead gets Carney involved in.  Another risky moment is him getting a wealthy and powerful Manhattan family’s huge jewel dumped on him to hold, also by Freddie. This bit gives a window into the power of the ‘white’ rich downtown and Park Avenue real estate developers who have criminals, cops and politicians at their beck and call.  But most sweet is his complicated plot to torpedo a rich and crooked banker in the Dumas Club who took $500 from him on a lie.     

The story is also a depiction of ‘black’ small business and middle-class success. It’s another Horatio Alger tale, like so many. Carney expands his shop, hires more help, moves from his crowded apartment to Riverside Drive, and even contemplates giving up fencing, as his wife Elizabeth has a good job at the Black Star travel company. He’s finally admitted to the private Dumas Club, which he’d been wanting to get into for 5 years.  What he has to hide is the $30K in seed money he used to start his furniture store – money from one of his dead father’s robberies.  So the intertwining of legal and illegal success is clear in Harlem.  Harlem is a geography of hidden and obvious wealth and crime.

Whitehead is not a political writer, though his prior book “Nickel Boys” (reviewed below) exposed a racist reform school in Florida called the Dozier School.  He’s more of a sociologist and a humanist, with heroes and villains, with people who change, tracing how society functioned in Harlem at the time.  To my mind there seem to be a surfeit of criminals in this story, and other than many dark skinned ladies working proletarian jobs, a dearth of males doing the same thing.  Everyone's a hustler? ‘Crime’ stories capture readers nowadays, as it is the main axis of fiction, streaming and TV – detective, noir, heist, assassin, cop, murder, sexual violence, true crime, high tech swindles, serial killers and the like. Perhaps that is his method of getting readers to read about Harlem, which might reinforce preconceived bigoted ideas.  It is an early picture of late-stage U.S. capitalism, including it’s strivers, as it disintegrates into inequality, poverty and racism. 

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “The Nickel Boys” (Whitehead); “Amiable With Big Teeth” (McKay); “Summer of Soul” (Questlove); “How to be a Revolutionary,” “Really the Blues” (Mezzrow); “Go Tell It on the Mountain” (Baldwin); “A Terrible Thing to Waste,” “Red Hook Summer” (Lee); “Black Radical” (Peery); “Capitalist Shadows.”

The Nickel Boys will soon be a movie.

The Cultural Marxist / November 2, 2024